Impractical Joke
by Cubby250
Summary: The trouble a Lost Boy gets into when thinking about pulling a practical joke on the other Lost Boys.


One of the things about being the biggest and the clumsiest Lost Boy is that you learn to laugh at yourself pretty quickly. Being a Lost Boy means that you normally get teased a lot. It's good natured teasing and I normally give as good as I get. However I tend to become the target of things a bit more frequently cuz I don't run quite as fast as the other boys and have a pretty big patient streak within me. There's also the fact that sometimes I manage to take things maybe a bit too far because of my sort of skewed sense of humour.

The whole thing started the day I came upon a patch of extremely potent landkin weed in one of the swamps that dot the island. I had heard there were some wild strawberries growing in the area from one of the woodland elves and was foraging for them. I accidentally stepped on a stalk of it (when your paws are as big as mine are, you tend to step into a lot of stuff you wished you hadn't sometimes) and immediately started to gag from the smell.

Landkin weed is ma nature's gift to Lost Boys with a huge mischievous streak in them. They look like almost like pineapple balm, but they have five petals on the flowers instead of four. As long as the stalks aren't broken they don't have any odor at all. The stalks can take a little rough stuff like when you pull them out of the ground they usually won't break. But once they've been out of the ground for awhile the stalks get more brittle. Then simply sitting on one can cause the stalk to break and the stench to spread. The stench. Phew! It smells like a combination of rotting meat, spoiled milk, and cabbage being cooked. The stench will cling to any and everything. You'd swear you could see a cloud of 'stink' come from the stalk. It had good staying power too. For practical jokes, it was several notches above rotten eggs. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which side of the stalk you were on, it wasn't real common. I'd only seen it twice on the island, and both times it was busy engulfing me in its unique smell.

I quickly forgot about the strawberries and may have actually chortled thinking about the potential for fun and mayhem this had. I carefully gathered up the couple of dozen or so stalks that were growing in the swamp and put them in the sack I was carrying. I rushed back towards Hangman's Tree as fast as I could move, because I didn't want the plants to go suddenly fragile on me while I was carrying them. Everything went fine until I was almost at the tree. I ran into Suerfoot, to whom I'd mentioned that I was going strawberry hunting to.

"Wow, Cub, it looks like you made quite a haul. That bag full of strawberries?"

"No. I mean, yes. There isn't as much as they look though. I mean it's got a lot of dirt and leaves in it too. I was sorta in a hurry and just pulled whatever would come," I managed to stammer out while trying to get a story straight in the back of my mind.

Stumble gave me a suspicious look. "It looks like a lot. How come your so nervous all of a sudden? You're not going to share any of them are you?"

"Yeah I am. I mean if there are any that are good. They looked sort of gross and old. I don't know if they're even any good or not. I didn't even have any on the way back. See?" I opened my mouth as wide as it would go. He stared at my face and then did a quick check of my hands and the front of the bearskin. Any of the Lost Boys could tell you that when I went berry picking most of the berries ended up inside me with those in the sack seeming to be an afterthought. I figured the fact that there weren't any strawberry stains on hands, face or skin would convince him.

"Yeahhhh…" he said slowly. "It doesn't look like you ate any."

"Cubby didn't eat something? What wasn't it?" Leo said as he dropped down by my head, hanging from his legs by one of the limbs from the tree. It surprised me enough that I jumped.

"Hey watch it," I said. "You almost hit me."

"Naw, I knew you'd jump backwards just like you always do," Leo said. "It was perfectly safe and besides, if I'd hit you, it'd only have been your head." He laughed.

I dropped the bag and grabbed for him. Naturally he pulled his head back up and I overcorrected and managed to fall over my feet landing on my stomach with an 'ooof'. The second 'ooof' was the one I made when Leo dropped from the limb and landed on my back yelling, "Tag, you're it!" He sprung to his feet, leaving a nice footprint in the middle of my back and took off.

There are some things you just can't ignore as a Lost Boy, even when you're busy planning mischief. One of those is being tagged. I lumbered after Leo and managed to tag him back when he misjudged the distance between banks of a mud puddle and slipped in the mud. Naturally I dived to tag him and did a bellyflop in the mud puddle causing water to fly everywhere. I scrambled to my feet and started running back in the direction we'd come from as Leo tried to wipe the muddy water out of his eyes. He happened to tag Tig who had innocently been wandering by. Tig in turn tagged Surefoot who came after me. I knew I was done for then. Although all the other boys run faster than me normally, Tig runs faster than all of them so I knew I'd be tagged any second. Instead he leaped and managed to tag Tinkerbell who'd been minding her own business.

The tag was hard enough that she went tumbling through the air and ended up landing in my mop of red hair which she immediately got tangled up in. I started slapping at my head where she was pulling my hair trying to get out. "Hey cut it out Tink. It's not my fault tha… OW! That hurts. Stop it. Ouch! (that last was where I had hit my head with my hand, missing her). She finally escaped from my curls and started lecturing me with bell ringing. Naturally I couldn't understand what she said, so I simply put my fingers in my ears and stuck my tongue out at her.

I guess I shouldn't have done that because she got all red and the jangling stopped. "Uh, Tink. I didn't mean to… I'll listen to whatever… Hey! What are you doing. No! Peter promised he wouldn't do that any…. Awww, Tink."

She had sprinkled the bottom half of me with pixie dust and now I was floating upside down about two feet off the ground feeling the blood rush to my head. She gave me a self satisfied smirk and flew off. The other boys thought this was hilarious, and Leo came up with some string in one of his pockets and tied it to my arm so they could all take turns pretending I was a balloon and pulling me around with it.

"Awww, c'mon guys. This isn't funny. My head feels weird. Pleeeaaseee."

It didn't take them long to get tired of the game and I was eventually left to drift by the branches of the tree while they got a game of marbles going. Stumble got upset when he almost immediately lost his best shooter, but made up for it by pulling me down by the string still attached to me, rummaging through my pocket and getting my best shooter. I just sighed and watched while he cleaned up.

The game went on for awhile until Stumble had most everyone's marbles. By this time the pixie dust was beginning to wear off and I could feel the sinking feeling that usually occurs right before the beginning of the fall to the ground. I figured it was going to mean another bump on the head until I glanced down and saw I was floating right over the sack with the landkin weed in it.

"Uh Leo? Leo? LEO!"

"Huh, what is it Cubbs?"

"Come're and move me quick. Before I fall."

"Aww I'm getting ready to shoot. You'll just land on your head like you always do."

Surefoot glanced over and then got up and started to run over where I was. "He's going to smash the strawberries!"

Tig and Leo exchanged glances. "Strawberries!" They both exclaimed at the same time and joined Surefoot.

Too little, too late. When Surefoot was about halfway towards me the pixie dust expired and I fell head first onto the bag of landkin weed. I saw it approach, closed my eyes. Bright light exploded in my eyes as my head made contact with the bag and the rest of my body followed it. That was nothing compared to the stench that suddenly arose from the bag. I swear I could hear the screeching of the other boys' paws as they tried to backtrack when they caught a whiff of the odor from the bag.

"That's not…" Tig began.

"…strawberries." Leo ended. "Ewwwwww!" they both exclaimed together.

"No wonder you were nervous." Surefoot said, sounding funny cuz he had his nose pinched closed. "I bet I know what you were going to do with those too."

I couldn't really answer because I was too busy trying not to be violently ill as well as trying to make my feet and legs work again. I'd never had my nose stuck into a bunch of landkin weed before and it makes the other experiences with it seem like nothing. The rest of the boys seemed to think I had gotten what I deserved since they were pretty sure as to what I was planning with it. I guess they know me too well, although they all admitted they'd have done the same thing. I ended up sleeping outside and being an outcast for a couple of weeks until I was able to get the stuff out of my hair, bearskin and body. Even the bleach I tried in desperation didn't work, although it did do some interesting stuff to my hair when I was done. Tinkerbell finally took pity on me (although rumor has it that Peter forced her to cuz he was tired of smelling it) and used pixie dust to get rid of a lot of the stench.

I figured things were back to normal when Surefoot walked up to me and gave me a friendly clap on the back. "Not a bad attempt at using the landkin weed, Cubbs, not bad at all. It would have been great if it had worked out. Too bad it didn't."

"Oh well," I said. "Maybe next time." I laughed.

"Yeah it's the thought that counts," he agreed. "So I'm sure you won't mind if we follow the rules for payback because of it."

I stopped laughing. "What rules for payback? There aren't any rules for payback? Rules are so… so… grownup."

"Well yeah, that's true," he said. "I guess we shouldn't have any payback rules then."

I shook my head, bear hood and hair flying. "That's right I said. No payback rules allowed here."

"That's a relief. Peter said that we'd have to get you to agree to that first."

"First? What do you mean?"

"Well the payback rules say that if you don't get a joke done on you, then you can't do a payback. Since you didn't really do the joke on us, but yourself then we couldn't pay you back. But now we can since you said you didn't want any rules." He gave an evil chuckle.

"Wait a second, you didn't explain that part," I protested. "That's not fair."

"Yeah, I know, but since there aren't any rules, I can't help ya. See you later Cubbs."

I groaned as he walked away wondering how long it would be before I received payback for the joke I had ended up playing on myself.

A couple of more weeks had passed since the Lankin Weed incident. I was finally at the point where I think all the odour was finally out of hair, skin and bearskin. At least I wasn't clearing the common room when I wandered in anymore and I was actually getting to the point where I could sneak up on people once again, well until I managed to step on the only branch anywhere around.

I had ended up doing a bunch of stuff that day and didn't even finish the bowl of stew for dinner. Yawning, I made my way to my pallet, sank under the blankets and furs and fell asleep almost instantly. I was dreaming of something to do with, of all things, teddy bears, and remember hugging one sort of tightly. I remember wondering why the teddy bear in the dream started squirming a bit, and I guess that's when I woke up.

The pallet was nicely warm, even though it had gotten pretty cold on some nights of late. I opened my eyes and looked down to find out the reason I was so warm was because I was sharing my bed with five or six cats. I wondered where they had come from, since to the best of my knowledge there were no cats on the island. No dogs either, although there seemed to be almost every other species of animal represented in some form or another. I figured at the very least it might keep the mouse population down. Although I'd never seen or heard any mice, I was told the tree was full of them.

I started to drift slowly back to sleep when I suddenly had a thought tickle the back of my mind. I lay there for a few minutes contemplating it and then decided there was simply no way anyone would pull something like that. It was just too horrible to contemplate, although it would make one heck of a payback. But still, that would just be going too far… wouldn't it?

I opened my eyes slowly and took a closer look at my bedmates. Each was kitten sized and black, with a white stripe running up the middle of its back. They were sleeping peacefully on each side of me, but they sure weren't purring. Somehow I doubted that skunks did much purring, happy or otherwise. I studied their positioning closely and looked at my two options. I could try slowly easing out from under the covers, twisting into a near perfect half hitch without disturbing them. The other option was to simply spring off the pallet and run as fast as I could to the common room door and slam it behind me, hopefully before any perfume was made to fly. I briefly considered simply going back to sleep, but decided that probably wouldn't work end up with a satisfactory ending.

Neither option was ideal for one known as the clumsiest Lost Boy, but I decided I might do better at easing out rather than the running thing. I slowly eased a couple of the blankets back. One of the skunks seemed to move a bit, but then quieted right down. I started easing out as quickly as I dared, which wasn't very quick at all. I was holding my breath because I knew any second all their eyes would snap open at the same time and they'd jump me and then spray me. I started breathing when I got lightheaded, but continued to slowly ease my way out.

It began to look like I was going to make it too. I was about 2/3 of the way off the pallet when I heard this 'pssssss' noise. I looked up to see Leo and Tig grinning at me from the common room's doorway, each with an arm behind his back. That didn't bode well. I then heard a musical tinkle and looked above them to see Tink flying around with a self-satisfied look on her face. I figured I was doomed.

"C'mon guys. Give me a chance," I pleaded. "Just let me ease on out of here."

They looked at each other and then at me and grinned.

"What's wrong, Cubby? We figured…" Leo began.

"…you'd like a pet to keep you company," Tig finished.

"Shhhh!." I gestured furiously trying to get them to either stop talking or at least lowering their voices. One of the skunks had shifted when the boys had been talking. "Okay, fun is fun, but this is nutsy. Please don't talk and wake them up."

"We wouldn't dream…" said Leo.

"…of talking," finished Tig.

I eased out a bit more when Leo and Tig showed me what they had behind their backs. They were each holding half of a set of cymbals. The slow sinking feeling escalated into an express elevator type sinking feeling when I saw the grins on both of their faces. They each took their half of the cymbals and slammed them together producing a riot of noise.

I winced as ten pairs of eyes suddenly opened and looked for the source of the noise. All of the eyes immediately locked onto me. I whimpered as they all turned and saluted me with their hindquarters, tails raised. I held my breath, waited for the end and… nothing. Nothing happened at all!

Leo and Tig both tell me they wished they'd been able to take pictures of my face right before I discovered that there wasn't going to be a spray. "You looked…" "… totally terrified." They said the cringing wasn't bad either and that the look of relief on my face was pretty comical. It turns out that each skunk had been temporarily blocked from spraying by a well placed application of pixie dust provided by Tink.

"Besides," Surefoot added. "You don't think we were going to stink up the common room just to play a joke on you, did ya?" Personally I thought it was entirely possible, but have to admit I appreciated the effort of the payback that turned out not to be payback.


End file.
